


up listening before dawn and singing out after midnight

by irrelevant



Category: DCU, DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Canon Related, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Old School, birdboys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-11
Updated: 2011-06-11
Packaged: 2017-10-20 08:12:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrelevant/pseuds/irrelevant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because Tim still looks best in green, and Dick will always look better in black and blue and Blüdhaven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	up listening before dawn and singing out after midnight

**Author's Note:**

> Murderer/Fugitive era, lots of references to past canon, slightly AU timeline, old school birdboys. I’ve had this sitting on my hard drive for a while, mostly because I’m not sure if anyone else cares about old school birdboys anymore.

i.  
“When?” he asks, bending forward to get a clearer view of her face. “I’m tight for time right now, and I thought he wanted to talk?”

The corner of her mouth draws in when she smiles at him, half a smile, the rest of it down on the floor crunched under her chair’s wheels. She says, “I wanted him to talk to you. B wants him on patrol. God only knows what he wants, I don’t think he does.”

Laughter starts in his throat, but it hurts too much coming out to feel or sound real. “Do I need to talk to Bruce?” he asks, a bluff he’ll never follow through on, and she knows it, even though she’s shaking her head.

“He’ll come when he can,” she says. “He can’t get away as often anymore.”

Dick leans back in his chair. He hasn’t been here longer than a couple of minutes and he feels like he’s been here two minutes too long. Already he’s twitching, tapping his thumb against the armrest, flipping a stray paperclip at the change jar on the floor. He’s glancing at her raised eyebrow, talking down to his hands: “So he’s thinking… what? This weekend? Next?”

“Maybe,” she tells him. “Maybe not. He said soon.” Something beeps and her chin snaps left, and he can’t see her eyes through her glasses anymore. “I’ve got incoming. Catch you later, former boy wonder.”

“Sure,” he mutters, relieved to be standing when the screen goes dark. “Soon. Because that really sounds like Tim.”

Not like Tim at all; soon’s not concrete enough for him. It’s a conveniently vague time marker for all of them _except_ for Tim, who believes in meeting deadlines, making schedules, and color-coding his timetables. Soon for Tim means not at all, probably, and letting this hang long enough to find out for sure if Tim’s finally learned the joys of flying by the seat of his never-were-short pants _feels_ like a really bad (dumb?) idea.

Loosening up in general just isn’t part of Tim’s credo. Little geek, little _weirdo_ , and he’s nothing like Dick or (jayjaybirdjason) but he’s Robin as much as Dick ever was, textbook headcase. Brother, little brother, even though that choice was never Dick’s.

Not at first, but now he makes it for himself every time he’s got Tim on the comm, half falling off a train, biting a hole in his lip to keep from laughing at some stupid joke Robin would have made once upon a time, but doesn’t anymore.

Not a bird boy, he’s not—not really. Baby bat. Skinny webbed wings and tiny fangs getting bigger all the time, and Jesus, what the hell are they doing? How far gone are they, enough not to come back from?

Not that Tim would let them, even if Bruce did. Scary-smart, and he’s Bruce’s brand of crazy that Dick can recognize and respect and never truly understand. He’s Gotham in a way Babs hasn’t been for a long time. Family, and… something more.

(the Slab, brackish water and unwashed human bodies, Joker’s insanity bled out of meta pores and Robin’s uniform and no Robin and _bones_ )

He needs… something. Doesn’t quite know, isn't even fifty percent sure what, but he wakes up smelling Joker’s blood and he calls Barbara and she tells him Joker’s in lockdown and Tim’s okay. And then Tim comms the day after, says he’s coming down for the weekend. But he never does.

Patrol in Gotham. Bruce is gone and he’s Batman and it’s just him, Tim, _them_ , got each other’s backs, always, like nobody else _could_.

Night in Blüdhaven. Crouched shoulder to shoulder at the top of a fire escape. And Tim cocks his head in a way that’s just Robin, Tim’s Robin, not Dick’s (not Jay’s), and points out that their perp couldn’t have done it that way because of this smudge in the wrong doorway and somebody’s cat crawling through somebody else’s cracked window screen and knocking these petals off of that potted plant onto that balcony, and in that moment Dick needs _something_ so much that he thinks if he can’t grab, can’t touch, rub up against, leave his Blühaven mark on Tim’s vampire Gotham skin, if, if he can’t, if Tim won’t _let_ him then he’ll just… be nowhere at all.

Nothing holding him down, grounding him. Gotham isn’t where he spends a once in a while Sunday anymore, not even the Tower. There’s always just enough time to get there and kiss Babs hello and goodbye, one comprehensive lip lock before someone or something pushes one or both of their buzzers. There’s just too much going down in his territory all the time, and his team—

Not his anymore.

He wonders if this is how Bruce felt the first time he almost died in costume. He can’t remember anymore why he thought he wanted to take on responsibility for a city by himself.

At night he flies the rooftops with Oracle’s (flat, surreal) voice for company. Daytime, he and Amy do their best to help plug up a dike with a million leaks without much success, and then he goes home wiped and talks to Clancy in passing—at the building door and her door and his, and maybe they hang out together for fifteen, twenty minutes before there’s something: gunshots, screams, whatever, and he’s flying again.

And when his head is empty and echoing with all the sounds, all the life that isn’t his, Gotham jumplines past him, circling wide out from him. Bisects his arc at the next building and hooks his knees out from under him; drops him down hard on dirty concrete.

He rolls with it. Curls over and up and there’s a gauntlet coming at him and he ducks, spins and rams, shoulder tight against body armor slamming Tim down onto the roof and pinning him.

Fangs, sure, but he’s still got the drop in flexibility, in inches and bulk. The way Timmy’s built, it’s likely he always will.

Siren headed their way, northbound; fire not police. Probably a medical emergency since there’s no smoke and—there goes the ambulance. Even in Blüdhaven coronaries happen without outside encouragement. Not as often as in other places, but often enough.

Tim’s breath is warm against Dick’s chin. His knee is killing the inside of Dick’s thigh and Dick _thinks_ that’s an elbow nudging his ribs. He’s going to have some interesting contusions tomorrow.

“Ow,” he says, and also, “Who left your cage open?”

Tim’s head is tilted, usual, known gesture that looks even more condescending from this angle. “I picked the lock on your apartment door ten times before you knew I existed. You never noticed.”

“And that’s not creepy at all. Who doesn’t want their own private stalker? Aside from you know who.”

“He stalks everyone.”

Dick snorts and rolls off Tim onto his back and they lie side by side, not moving. Tim is tight and shivery all over, Dick can almost feel him vibrating the small amount of space that separates their arms. “I still have ground to cover,” Dick says.

“Hmn.”

“You should be in… bed?”

“My dad and the dean would agree with you,” Tim says.

He notes the emphasis weighing in on _you_ and shrugs mentally. He’s nobody’s father. The Titans don’t count. “Come on, Robin, up and at ‘em. Time to fly.” And it’s time to move, fold his legs in, curl himself upright.

Tim tips his head back as he rolls to his feet, his teeth and lenses a brief, white flash against night-dark brick. “Where’ve you been spending your days, Drill Sergeant, sir?”

Dick flicks his ear, not fast enough to get him good, but it’s still fun to watch him jerk and shy. “If you have to ask, the cave and the JLA’s satellite systems must be toast. You know where I work, kiddo.”

And okay, that’s just way too much smug.

“Gonna LoJack your butt, stalker-boy,” he growls, and watches Tim’s mouth twitch.

“And Redbird and my suit, my bedroom… my _bathroom_ —”

“My hand, your head.” He’s not Batman. He might be, could be (been there, done that) but he’s not going there right now.

Tim slides past him toward the edge of the roof, the smell of him sweaty teenage boy and always, always blood-warm Kevlar. Dick breathes in and swallows and his fingers curl around the sense memory of armored skin.

He has another kind of memory. From years and years ago. And he’s almost certain a memory is what it is, it just feels more like a fever dream. But he’s pretty sure it’s a memory because unlike a lot of his dreams where he’s watching someone else’s action, he’s present and conscious and there’s water and big fish that want to eat him, and there’s… this kid. Who looks like him, like _Robin_ , but not. Who looks even more like Tim.

It’s unreal. Should not be possible. But it’s there in his head, ragged around the edges like somebody hit delete without highlighting everything.

“Robin.” Sometimes? It hurts to say it. Even though it’s Tim he’s saying it to, Timmy, the kid brother he chooses for himself as often as he can.

Who is… looking back at Dick over his shoulder. His grapple is in his hand, his hair is half a bottle of product spiked and he’s terrifyingly young, the vigilante with vigilante girlfriend issue notwithstanding.

And Dick knows playing the age card is hypocritical as fuck because you know, Robin prime. But Tim is—he’s Tim. Just like Jason was Jason, and that kid was a _tank_. He would’ve bet that of all of them Jay was the one who wouldn’t ever go down. Hell, he never even considered that the kid maybe couldn’t, shouldn’t _have_ to… take care of himself all the time in all the ways that really count.

And he kind of hates himself for it now because it never occurred to him to do it right. To call the kid up and say, “Hey, little wing, I know you hate it when I call you that and I know you think I’m a dick in more ways than one. But if you ever need to get out of there, you know where I am. All you have to do is show up. Door’s open.”

Say it, say it again. Keep on saying it, even if you don’t get an immediate response. Make yourself a tangible part of the kid’s life.

Seriously, how hard would it have been? In their world secure lines are ubiquitous and words are cheap and a few of them thrown out after an aborted beat-down don’t count. They really, really don’t.

Because _that_ kid… attitude all over the place, just screaming for validation, but not Bruce’s. Jason had that and then some.

More than Dick ever did, and wow, that smarts exactly as much as he thought it would.

Batman’s always been about action over noise but until Tim, Robin was defined by his smart mouth as much as his insane colors. And Jay, punk street kid with balls enough to jack _the_ car’s tires, he understood that. He owned it.

Fifteen minutes face to face with a guy you don’t know from Robin is easy to walk away from. But with a little positive reinforcement, hitting the comm-link becomes automatic response. And then maybe Jason would’ve felt like he had someone out there who gave a damn and wasn’t Bruce. Someone (brother) he could’ve talked an MIA mother over with before hopping a plane to Joker central, because she wouldn’t have been his only alternative to _Batman_.

Because Alfred… no, and also? No.

And then maybe Dick would have grown up a little faster and learned how not to take his jealousy and hurt out on an emotionally damaged kid seven years his junior.

Like that, yeah, and he knows he screwed up royally, and pretty but dumb is Brucie Wayne, not Officer Richard Grayson. He’s not going to make the same mistake twice. Because Tim is—

“Nightwing?”

“Still here.” Alive and _oh_ yeah, right here. Tim is.

“I assume we’re doing this sometime tonight.”

Born ready, even though he can just about see the affronted look Tim would give him if he said it out loud. “Little brother, we absolutely are.”

He almost misses soft catch of Tim’s breath. Almost. He moves through the cool at the top of his city into Tim’s heat and he lets his hand (gauntlet) curl around the back of Tim’s neck, as opposed to smacking the back of his spiky, scarily intelligent head.

He squeezes as gently as Bruce never, ever will.

Tim doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t move at all. He stands there with Dick’s hand on him, and that’s probably the most telling thing he could’ve done. Dick can’t even hear him breathing.

“Let’s fly,” Dick says, and he drops his hand and lets himself fall.

\--

Tim is long gone and Dick is home and halfway out of his suit before he remembers that Tim never told him what he wanted to talk about.

 

ii.  
For a while, Gotham stops showing up on his rooftops. No one else from the cape and cowl crowd pops who doesn’t already have an invitation.

He leaves voice messages, sends and receives email. Things are (relatively) quiet, and after No Man’s Land, he chooses to take that as a good sign.

For a while. A little while because in this family, that’s all you ever get. Splinters and shards of okay piercing solid blocks of hell, and then, _then_ a woman is dead and Bruce is in prison and Babs and Tim are acting like they think maybe he belongs there.

Dick pulls the splinter out of his eye with his bleeding fingers. He doesn’t bother looking for the log.

Cassandra is a tentative prop for his denial, but she’s a trick leg and Dick’s three pillars, his _foundations_ are shaking apart. He listens to Babs without hearing anything she says, then he cuts Tim in half in eight words or less and goes (not home, not) back to the Haven. It’s still early for him, so he rearranges a would-be rapist’s overall bone structure, some dealers’ faces and then he… rearranges his living room.

Clancy knocks just as he’s about to move on to the kitchen. He tells her to go away through his closed door. She does, but only for a few minutes and then she’s back with a key and Amygdala.

Which could be scary except that the guy lives in terror he’s going to hit something too hard and end up back in Arkham. Dick’s seen him walk around a line of ants marching down the sidewalk. There’s an amazingly decent guy under all that impressive bulk (he still has occasional the hell? moments about it) and that’s the guy who taps timidly on Dick’s now open door before poking his head around it. “Mr. Grayson? Is everything okay?”

But it’s Clancy who pushes the door to. Clancy who walks in while Amygdala backs down the stairs with a little wave to Dick, and Clancy who leans cross-armed in the doorway and drawls, “So this is why I’m getting complaints. Love what you’ve done with the place. And how’s life treating you this fine evening, handsome?”

“Perfect if everyone would go away and stay there,” he says, stupid, really stupid, and like most of the women in his life she doesn’t let him get away with it. Her pretty mouth pinches tight and she gets right up out of her slouch and into his face.

“Don’t you be telling me where to get off, boyo,” she growls. “I’m still your bloody landlord for the next five days and you can damn well respect that.”

And I own this firetrap, he almost-but-doesn’t say because, because she’s Clance and he’s not in love with her, but he still loves her like crazy and he’s not going to hurt anyone else he loves tonight.

He says, “I know,” and he says, “I’m sorry, Clance, I just—”

And she’s wax, a little like Babs (occasionally), not like Helena (ever), and a lot like Kory the way she melts, the way her face gets softer when he smiles at her and runs his hand through his hair.

“It’s been,” he starts, and she grins and finishes up for him: “A bad day, week, month, year, I got you.” She sighs and shakes her head and cups his cheek. “Sure and you’re one for the books, Grayson.” Cocks her head, eyeballing the new configuration of his furniture before grinning up at him. “Third time’s the charm?”

He can feel his cheek heating up under her hand, and he returns the grin, somewhat sheepishly. “I guess you heard all that, huh?”

“Everyone in the building heard all that,” she says dryly, patting his cheek then pulling her hand away, hooking her thumbs in her pockets. She tilts her head to one side, frowning at his entertainment center. “I’d try moving it a few feet to the right, but—”

Her smile is _really_ dry. “Do it tomorrow, won’t you?

Dick sweeps her the bow he used to give Haly’s audiences. “Anything for a lovely lady.” And she’s laughing again, sparkling the way she always should, and he tells her that.

“Get along with your pretty, lying arse,” she says, smacking his shoulder as she turns. “And leave the heavy lifting for later,” she calls back through the door he’s closing after her.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I think I’ve got everything pretty much where I want it.” He shuts the door on her laughter and turns and leans, letting the back of his head tap the painted finish. He wonders if he could have said anything further from the truth.

He seriously doubts it.

 

iii.  
After the Case breaks he stops thinking. Instinctive self preservation, it’s that or kiss what’s left of his sanity goodbye. Because the desperation bubbling just below the surface of his thoughts feels too close to lying in bed with a bullet hole in his shoulder watching Bruce walk away for him to live with.

He reacts to everyone else’s action, and he keeps reacting, and his brain doesn’t really kick in again until he hears Cass say, “Nerve strike.”

And then Tim and Babs are grinning at each other, and Steph is kind of smirking. Cass looks guardedly hopeful, and Dick is starting to get that they’ve got some solid evidence to work with, _finally_.

After Tim looks straight at him for the first time in over a week and says, “This is good,” his messed up brain decides it’s safe to let him feel how relieved he is. And he knows he can be as much of a hypocrite as Bruce sometimes, but he hasn’t felt this bad about it in a long, long time.

He opens his mouth to say… something. What? He needs to tell Tim he’s sorry for, Jesus, for being him. God. And there’s nothing. Not a damn thing coming out.

Tim is watching him with that little corner of his mouth quirk that’s not really a smile. He waits and Dick says _nothing_ , and it feels like millennia passing before Tim nods, almost to himself, and turns away. Dick fists his hands and shuts his eyes and listens to the murmur of Tim saying goodnight to everyone else. He doesn’t open his eyes until the door closes, and then it’s just Babs sitting there in her chair, watching him.

Her expression resembles Tim’s so closely it’s scary.

She doesn’t say anything, either. She doesn’t have to.

\--

If you’re not moving, you’re dead. That’s what he’s always believed, always felt.

And movement for its own sake is life, is existence, but moving with purpose is _living_. Now that he’s got a direction to move in he’s going to keep going until Bruce stops making like he’s nothing but vengeance incarnate and comes home. Motion is the game, and the result – the fried tech in the cave – is bittersweet icing: an extremely nice side effect.

The surveillance records are only half the reason he asks Tim to meet him.

He could send the encrypted files to Tim’s PC, but he needs an excuse to get Tim alone somewhere that isn’t the clock tower, and turning over the disc is the only thing he can come up with that Tim might buy. And then Tim’s sitting next to him, not looking at him; they’re talking about everything but what they need to talk about, and Dick chokes, god damn it, again.

He chokes so hard his throat’s still aching and swollen with everything he doesn’t say when he wakes up the next morning.

He’s always been lucky, though, and he must have done something right, because two days later Tim has a plan and his old smirk, and the cave feels less like one more place Bruce abandoned him than it does a means to an end. Listening to Tim freaking out about his radio silence feels like…

It feels like grace, the kind you only get given and never can earn. It feels like they’ve already won, and not even reenacting Vesper’s death with Cass can change that.

“You staying tonight?” Babs asks him afterward, and he pushes his exhaustion up with his eyelids and smiles at her. She smirks back, and he thinks _so that’s where Tim gets it from._ One of the places, anyway. “Don’t worry,” she adds, nudging the bench he’s lying on, making it slip and slide under his ass, “I won’t make you sleep out here.”

He laughs and swings his legs to the floor, scrubbing a hand over his chin. “As tempting as the opportunity to ruin one of your razors is…”

And gets thumped on the head with a rolled up magazine.

But she’s laughing and he’s laughing with her, and even if it feels a little too close to hysteria for comfort, it still feels good.

“I screwed up,” he says when they’ve both quieted down enough that he can hear the soft hum of her computers again.

“You sure did,” she agrees, and he both loves and hates that she’s known him long enough to know what he’s talking about without having to ask.

The moonlight coming through the skylights mixes oddly with the yellow light from the clock face. It slants strange shadows over her cheekbones, turns her glasses the opaque green of Kory’s eyes.

“I’m not going to run interference for you,” she says. “You need to fix this one on your own.”

He groans and drops his head back, staring blindly up. “I know.”

“Soon.”

“I _know_.”

Her smile breaks over her face with the suddenness of high-heeled yellow boots slamming into a thug’s ugly mug. “Sometimes you know way too much for a guy without a clue.”

“Yeah,” he says, grinning, knowing. “I know.”

She laughs again, and she leans in and kisses him, and it figures that just when he stops being surprised and starts getting interested, she shoves him away. “Go home,” she tells him. “Stay there for the rest of the week. We can handle things here for three days.”

He nods and stands up, his jaw cracking on a yawn. Her hand is steady on his hip and he automatically leans into her support… “Tell him—”

And breaks off, coughing, because her fingers just dug in, and her hand can still throw a batarang as far—no, farther, _harder_ than ever. She’s shaking her head again, her eyes cutting though him, sharper than Bruce’s and serrated to boot.

“Tell him yourself, hunk wonder,” she says. “Just don’t wait too long to do it.”

 

iv.  
Sleep is a concept that applies to other people.

Exhaustion is more than a way of life.

Tired isn’t the word for what he is, but he’s been in Gotham too many nights lately to waste the ones he spends here. And it has to be – it _is_ almost two when he crawls through his living room window, because the cat that lives in the building next door always comes in around two. And there it goes up the fire escape, and he doesn’t even _want_ to know what it says about him that he knows the nocturnal patterns of a straying housecat by heart.

He holds the blind back long enough to watch its tail disappear, then he uses his teeth on one gauntlet while he closes the window. He walks down the hall into his bedroom without turning on the lights, and Tim is huddled in the shadows just inside the window.

Dick throws his gauntlet at his open closet and writes the shower he’s dying for off as a lost cause. Probably the sleep as well, and he wishes that Tim’s timing was either a little more perfect or a little less.

Because he is tired – closer to worn _out_ – and he thought he wanted this, the lines of communication cleared and open again, but if it has to happen right now, he’s halfway sure he doesn’t. He strips off his other gauntlet and looks at Tim, quiet and Robin, and he’s going to do this whether he wants to or not. “You coming in?” he asks.

Tim stays where he is. “Am I?”

Dick snorts and starts peeling off the top of his suit. “If you don’t know the answer to that, kiddo, you’ve lost more than a couple of marbles. Take a load off.” He balls the shirt up and it joins his gauntlets on the closet floor— “He shoots, he scores!”

Tim says, “I can’t believe you keep that in there.”

“Like you don’t?” He turns, hands on his hips, and Tim is a step or two closer than he was before.

Tim’s mouth is doing this twisting, rippling thing. Like it wants to smile, even if he doesn’t. “I keep it behind the wall. There’s a difference.”

“You keep telling yourself that if it helps,” Dick says, and pushes his tights down his legs. He ignores the soft sound Tim makes as he throws the tights in with the rest.

“You’re still—” He looks up in time to see Tim swallowing the rest of it down.

“Still what?” he says. “Tim,” because Tim is shaking his head, “what?”

“Nothing.” Tim’s chin is tucked. He’s looking at the window and Dick knows exactly how this is going to go down if he doesn’t get some preventative measures into place.

Tim will be out the window and Dick will end up staring at the ceiling instead of sleeping. Which, no. Not happening. Not if—

Right there, peeking out from under a pile of laundry he really needs to do. Left over from the New Year’s open house party, although how it ended up _here_ —

Doesn’t matter. He scoops the neon orange plastic pistol up and points the nozzle at Tim. “This is a stickup. Hand over the belt, the cape and the mask and no one gets sprayed.”

Tim has a batarang out and ready before _this_ is out of Dick’s mouth. Dick couldn’t be prouder. “What? I—Dick?”

Dick watches his fingers flex, clamping down on the batarang hard enough to turn the tips white. And grins. “Ease up, boy wonder,” he says, hanging onto his silly string pistol because this is Tim and he’d be stupid to let go his best defense, “and listen up. Here’s how we’re going to work this. I’m taking your stuff hostage because as soon as I get in the shower you’ll bail.” He cuts Tim’s protest off with a raised hand before Tim can do more than open his mouth. “Tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.”

Tim shuts his mouth again. A fraction of a second later the batarang drops.

“That’s what I thought,” Dick says. He wiggles the fingers of his free hand, gimme gimme. “Hand ‘em over, bird boy, or you’ll be picking purple gunk out of your hair for days.”

The cape rustles. Tim’s shoulders stop looking like they’re glass and Dick’s the hammer coming down. “Belt and mask. No cape.”

“Deal,” Dick says. “Gimme.” He watches the disarming process with interest. “Bruce add in some new security measures?”

Tim takes a tiny atomizer from the belt before dropping it into Dick’s waiting hand. “No.” The edges of the domino curl up under the spray; Tim peels it off and blinks at Dick from night-blind eyes. “I did.”

He lays the mask on top of the belt and his hand and arm disappear back into the cape.

“You are something else,” Dick says, shaking his head. “Remind me to remember that’s a good thing in a few hours. You.” He points at the bed. “Sit. I’ll be back in a couple, and then _you’re_ going to take a shower and after that we’re crashing.”

Tim looks like he wants to protest. Dick doesn’t let him, dangles the belt in front of him and shakes his head. “I have hostages, here. Don’t make me do something we’ll both regret. Tomorrow’s Sunday. Call your folks and tell them you’re at a friend’s.”

He ducks into the bathroom before Tim can answer. Then he his sticks his head out again.

Tim is still standing in the same place, no skin showing anywhere but his face. Dick makes a disgusted noise. “Would you sit down?” he says. Tim shrugs.

Dick tries out a Nightwing scowl. “You better still be here when I get out.”

The Robin smirk looks weird without the mask, but Tim manages to pull it off.

“A likely story,” Dick says, but he pulls his head back in and starts the shower. Tim will do what Tim’s going to do. He’ll be there or not.

Probably not, but Dick’s done everything he can do short of tying him up, and he really wants to get clean, and compromise is a _good_ thing. He tells himself that again and leaves the door open, hoping Tim doesn’t cut out while he’s trying to keep the soap out of his eyes.

\--

Tim is still fully dressed, sitting up on the bed with his back to the bathroom when Dick gets out of the shower. He walks through a wall of steam back into the bedroom, scrubbing the last of the water out of his hair, and deliberately tosses his towel over the door.

Towels in places towels should not be are red flags for Alfreds and neat freaks everywhere. Tim’s shoulders twitch like he’s got an itch between his shoulder blades. Dick crosses his arms and grins, waiting, and it’s maybe five seconds before Tim’s head turns, just enough for Dick to see the thinned line of his mouth.

“All yours,” Dick says, and he wanders over to root through his dresser for a pair of boxers and a clean tee, not watching Tim. Making it easy for him to… do whatever he’s going to do.

He hears Tim’s cape slither-slide off his shoulders, hears the creak of gauntlets and boots discarded. The bare pad of Tim’s feet.

The scrape of terrycloth over wood, followed by the click of the bathroom door closing.

The toilet flushes and the shower goes on. Dick tugs his t-shirt down and flops facedown and yawning onto the bed. He’s not going to sleep yet, but he feels the need to be horizontal, and after thirty-six hours awake, horizontal inevitably means semiconscious.

He gives in, closes his eyes and drifts.

Exhaustion limbo tips slowly towards oblivion as he watches the pretty purple and red patterns dance across the backs of his closed lids. Background noise flares and levels off, verging on not quite enough to keep him awake, and then the bathroom fan goes off and the door opens again, and the sudden cessation of sound hits his ears like a shock of water. New sounds are slow in coming, footsteps on carpet soft, but Dick’s got good ears. He stays still and listens.

Tim is moving around the room, purposeful but uncertain. Not used to the setup or Dick’s random discard pattern. Muffled thump and a word Dick doesn’t usually hear coming out of Tim’s mouth, and Dick feels himself smile. Feels his brain shed a few more layers of groggy fog.

“Shorts and shirt on the desk,” he says without raising his head or opening his eyes. “Bed’s big enough for both of us.”

That’s his… brush? Sounds different going through Tim’s hair, the same way Tim’s nighttime pattern sounds different wandering around his room. He’d already be back in the bathroom after something he forgot, looking through his drawers for the pair of shorts crumpled up on the floor in the corner. Tim’s methodical, already picked up everything he needs in descending order of necessity. It’s so Timmy it makes him grin. Makes him want to get up and hug, and he almost does, but then he _remembers_ and—

The brush clicks against the top of the dresser. The bed buckles and slides under Dick’s hips. And settles, evening out with Tim’s sprawled weight.

The pillow is just soft enough and the mattress isn’t soft at all, and careful is the best Tim word he knows.

Careful to stay on his side. Careful not to cross the invisible line dotted down the center. If Dick put his hand out, he’s almost sure he’d feel—

Soft and hard and stretched out, anemone arms and legs splayed every which way, blind grope _searching_ —

He wallows in his pillow, wriggles down into the bare give of the mattress. Stretches until his big toe is a blatant threat to the line’s sovereignty.

Nudges Tim’s ankle, and Tim… jumps. Another good Tim word, his jumpy, freaky little brother. “I can hear you thinking over there,” he says.

Only Tim can make laughter sound like penance and an apology tied neatly up in a fatalistic bow. “I can sleep on the couch.”

Dick hooks his ankle over Tim’s, feels the jolt go all through him. “No,” he says thoughtfully, “I really don’t think you can.”

“Dick—”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve got couch monsters. Things that live in the cracks and bite your fingers when you try to find the pen you just lost.” He strokes Tim’s instep with his toe. “You’re small, so they might eat you instead of the pen. Did you know you have a scar on the top of your foot?”

“I—” Dazed, off balance, exactly where Dick wants him to be. “I fell off a swing when I was six. Dick, you—”

“I’m sorry.”

And that? That’s what this is all about. Monsters and young-old scars and things that live in the nightmare back of Bruce’s brain. Things that _none_ of them can see, not even Tim, who’s so much like him that sometimes Dick can see a cowl instead of Robin’s domino.

Dick isn’t sorry for that, but he is sorry for letting some part of himself believe there’s something _wrong_ with Tim for being that way. For being himself, cautious and wary, because Bruce would want that, expect it from him, from _them_.

Tim says, abruptly, “Do you remember—”

“Shiva?” Dick finishes for him. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that all week.”

“You thought…” No catch in his breath, no jump in the pulse under Dick’s foot. “Back then, you believed he could kill. You believed it and I – I didn’t. I couldn’t. I _couldn’t_ , Dick.”

If he wasn’t listening for it, he wouldn’t have heard it. Breath of sound, tiny hitch of air pulled in too fast. Choked down along with something thicker, wetter, and Dick is already reaching. Stretching his arm out until he can feel Tim’s basic Tim-ness coming at him across a line that exists only in Tim’s mind. “Tim—”

“ _Don’t_. Just… don’t. I can’t—” His ankle _jerks_.

And the bed shakes—

Dick waits, waits, feels like he’s not even _breathing_ —

Tim is breathing. Dick can hear it. If he put his hand up he could _feel_ it, but as good as surety would be… “Month before last you were going to talk to me about something. Still want to tell me?”

Ugly, rusty sound. Not even pretending to be human. “I never wanted… that was…” Babs? Is _that_ what he’s hearing…? “Have you ever considered the difference between losing something as opposed to never having had it?”

What? “Tim, what—”

“How much—how wrong is it that my first concrete memory is of you smiling at me? That it’s also one of few good memories I associate with both of my parents?”

Just a voice in the dark. Raw, shaky, clawing up his guts. He cocks his head, but the moon is gone. All he can see is a faint suggestion of Tim’s profile. He can’t see Tim’s mouth moving, even though he knows it is.

“My dad. He’s… not happy. About losing our money. About me always being places I shouldn’t be. I think it’s being out of control that he hates most, and he’s just… I don’t know. I don’t know how to help him. I don’t know how to fix this. He… he’s—”

“Your dad,” Dick says quietly, and reaches the rest of the way. “He’s your dad and you love him.” Warm. Tim is warm, and why does that surprise him so much?

And he _thinks_ that dry click is Tim swallowing, convulsively, and Tim’s arm is still, stiller, stillest under his hand.

“You do,” he tells him, “and you loved her. Your mom. And it’s wrong, what happened. To her. To Vesper. And—” And now _he’s_ swallowing because this is where he’s going to screw up but good, and god, why can’t he just leave the psych stuff to Babs and Alfred?

He clears his throat and holds on to Tim’s arm and he says, “It’s not your fault.” And even though it’s probably a mistake: “It’s not Bruce’s fault, either.” And Tim starts shaking. “You don’t _need_ me to tell you this.” But it sounds like a plea instead of a statement, and Tim’s… Tim is…

Across the bed (like a Flash Bart _Wally_ ), his forehead pressed hard against Dick’s shoulder. His hands tighten and Dick hears, _feels_ the worn cotton of his t-shirt tear and he doesn’t care. He cups the back of Tim’s neck and wraps his arm around him as far as it’ll go. Presses his mouth against Tim’s hair. “It’s okay,” he says, and knows it for a lie. “He’s coming home. He is.”

“I know that,” Tim says, and he sounds so… so wrong, he’s too young to sound as tired as Dick feels. “I know.” His hair is clean and gel-free. It smells like Dick’s shampoo and it slides like water across Dick’s skin. “Do you?”

Dick gently fists his hand in Tim’s hair and pulls his head up. “That’s a really stupid question.”

“Is it?” Before Dick can muster his single brain cell into a rebuttal Tim says, “Do you ever wonder what the next one will be like?”

Dick blinks. Because… “The next _what_?”

Tim reaches up and tugs Dick’s hand free of his hair. He pushes himself up, straddling him, and he’s not frowning, there’s just—

This eyebrow tilt that looks like it _wants_ to be a frown. “The next Robin,” he says. And that’s almost a smile. “I won’t be able to do this forever.”

Blinding, blanked out, _wrong_. God, so wrong, and, “Jesus, Tim, _no_. What—” The judder and shake of Tim’s body is vibrating through him into Dick, and it feels like laughter and it sounds like pain. Dick wraps his hands around Tim’s wrists and yanks him back down. Presses his head back down onto his shoulder. “Told you not to ask stupid questions.”

“No you didn’t. You said it _was_ a stupid question.”

“Well, I’m telling you.” Smooth hair and skin, warm under his hand where the back of Tim’s shirt is riding up. He rubs his cheek against the top of Tim’s head, strokes the small of his back. “You were mine, you know? My Robin. You’ll always be my Robin. Okay?”

Tim’s breath is a warm, damp patch on Dick’s tee, sticking it to his skin. Possibly he’s asleep. Probably, maybe, hopefully, and Dick isn’t going to move again, he’s just going to pretend right along with Tim that the last ten minutes didn’t happen. He’s going to shut up and fade out—

“Dick.”

Lovely, perfectly possible sleep recedes, goes away on a wave of Tim’s disapproval. “Mn?”

“You don’t actually expect me to sleep on you?”

And that’s… god. So much better than what he was expecting. Waiting for.

“Dick?”

Well, if _he_ can do it… “Sure.” He stifles his yawn against the side of Tim’s neck, breathes in warm, clean Timmy skin. “Why not?”

Tim lifts his head. He’s looking down at Dick, mouth parted, and Dick prepares to be lectured on precisely why sleeping on another person is a no-good, terrible bad idea. But Tim is just sitting there, mouth slightly open, not talking, and the look on his face is—

He’s still trying to decide if he wants to know what that expression means when Tim leans down and kisses him.

Dick thinks _Babs_ , and then he wonders why. But part of him knows, the same part that’s already comparing this kiss to the last one he got, which was—

The Tower and her tech all around them and her hair soft against his cheek. Metal and cinnamon in his lungs and his mouth.

Tim’s mouth tastes like Dick’s toothpaste. It’s still against his own, not moving at all. Not sure what to do. And he feels that. He remembers – _god_ , yes, he remembers how it feels to be that unsure, and he feels it when the panic kicks in and Tim stops going with the flow and starts thinking again, and Dick needs to—

“Don’t,” he says, mouth to mouth, soft and a little wet, “Please.” Wraps his hand around the back of Tim’s neck, but he doesn’t press. No pressure here, just _asking_ , “Please.” Letting him know he can stay. If it’s what he wants.

What Dick… wants, and that’s not the right word, it’s not strong (good?) enough for what he wants. His hands on Tim and Tim’s mouth moving against his. Moving and open and he can show him how, he _wants_ that, but Tim’s already pulling back. His eyes are – they’re open, Dick can see the lids flickering, the light is good enough for that and not much else.

“I,” Tim says. High and riding the edge of sharp. Reaching for panic. “I’m s—”

“Don’t apologize. You have _nothing_ to—” Eyes too wide, looking down at him over his hand. Breath, warm on his palm. Tim threads his fingers between Dick’s and pulls Dick’s hand away from his mouth, but even that’s—

Not very far. Tim’s breath hits his palm in quick, hard gusts, and he’s holding tight to Dick’s hands. Holding on to _him_.

“Come back down?” Dick hears himself say, and he’ll—he _will_ look away sometime soon. As soon as he can really see Tim’s face, or Tim turns his head, or—

Tim’s hands drop, curl back into Dick’s t-shirt. He leans down until Dick can see the straight line of his nose. The round of his mouth that _could_ be relaxed except for one tiny, uncertain indent…

Sometimes, Dick feels like he’s spent half his life waiting. For someone, anyone—

(ClarkBabs _Bruce_ )

For someone to _tell_ him—

“Perfect, Robin, that was perfect!”

“—don’t call you Boy Wonder for nothing.”

“Good job.”

Tell him and then lean in those last few inches.

And he won’t—he _can’t_ think about Tim doing the same thing for almost as long, because if he does…

If he—

 _…wrong is it that my first concrete memory…_

His eyes are open but he can’t see what he needs to, there’s not enough damn _light_ , and Tim—

Curled down into him, forehead pressed against his shoulder. And he can’t decide if he’s too light or too heavy, and he knows exactly what he could do. What he could say to make Tim get off him and leave so that both of them can go back to pretending that it’s two months ago. That Bruce will be in the cave when Tim gets back. That there aren’t bullet holes in the walls and stains on the foyer floor, that if Dick picked up the phone and dialed _right now_ , someone in Vesper’s apartment would pick up.

He has to brush Tim’s hair away from his forehead to clear it, which is kind of unusual. Tim likes his product. Likes his frown lines, too, but for once the skin there is smooth, his forehead free of worry.

Dick kisses it. He wants to know what Tim feels like, what he tastes like without worry.

He drags his lips along Tim’s hairline, kisses down from his temple to his cheekbone and his jaw. The side of his neck.

And Tim’s breathing is stuttering and his hands are as good as gauntlets and Dick is rocking him, rocking them both, just a little. Back and forth, over and over.

He’s whispering things not even he can hear.

After a while, Tim stops shaking and digging bruises into Dick’s skin with his hands. After a while, Dick’s shoulder is wet and Tim is warm and limp on top of him. He turns his head and Tim’s hair slides over his mouth, catches in the seam of his lips. Past Tim’s head, the known outline of his room is taking shape. The darkness outside the window is faintly lighter than it was the last time he looked.

He strokes his hand once over Tim’s hair, smoothing it away from his mouth. Does it again, pushing his luck down to the small of Tim’s back, to the hike of his shirt and the small scar that doesn’t stop at the waistband of Dick’s boxers.

He lets his thumb slide under. Rubs it gently up and down gently ridged skin while he thinks about moving it. Thinks about moving Tim. About moving himself.

Eventually he leaves both his thumb and Tim where they are and closes his eyes.

 

v.  
No heat but what his own skin makes and nothing weighing him down.

He doesn’t think either of those things woke him up, they’re just what he feels and more importantly what he _doesn’t_ feel, not on top of or against him.

Dick opens his eyes and immediately shuts them again. Says a really bad word because the blinds are wide open and the sun has it in for him.

Shifts his position and tries again, and _now_ he can see Tim through his slitted eyelids. Balled in, huddled up against the far edge, curled into himself under the blanket when what he should be is tangled up around Dick.

He looks too small for Dick’s bed and too young for anything at all. Dick watches his own hand start to reach; he stares at it like it belongs to someone else, and the comm he left on the nightstand buzzes.

He grabs it before it can do more than vibrate once, before it can wake Tim up. And he’s already sliding backwards off the bed, sliding the comm in and sliding out of the room.

“I take it he’s with you?” Oracle says in his ear, and Dick trips over his nightstick, catches himself on the coffee table, flips _over_ the coffee table—

And lands ass down in the middle of the couch, and he really is going to… “I’m either going to kiss you or kill you the next time I see you,” he says.

“Not sure?”

“Never,” he says as he drops flat down on his back, but his mouth feels like a smile and his chest feels less like the aftermath of a cave-in than it did even twelve hours ago. “What’s up?”

“I think that’s my line.”

He rubs a hand over his eyes. “Babs, can we… not do this? At least not right now. Please?”

On the other end of the line, the sound of typing pauses. “Is he okay?”

“Asleep.” Evasion-wise it’s not even half-assed. He’s surprised when she lets it ride.

“And you?”

He starts to open his mouth. Gets ready to fail even worse dodging the bullet this time, and—

And he doesn’t. He closes his mouth and thinks about how much he owes her. Pokes a mental stick into a few hornets’ nests he hasn’t stirred up in at least a month.

It must take him longer to get out from under the buzzing than he thinks because she says, “Dick?” Actually, she sounds pretty worried. “Are you okay?” she repeats.

There’s no good answer. He settles for an almost truth. “Not really. But I think I’m getting there.”

She laughs, or something like it, and he thinks she says “Liar,” but he’s… no, he’s not sure. He’s not sure about anything anymore.

“Bruce accessed the cave database last night,” she says.

Except for that. “About time,” he says, because that _is_ the truth. “Look, I’ll be back up tomorrow for sure. Maybe tonight.”

“Robin?”

“Actually,” he says, “I’ve got a bad feeling about that.”

“Having trouble keeping your ducks in a row? Now you know how I feel.”

“Har-de-har-har,” Dick says. “I’m just going to go sit on my eggs, now, thanks so much.”

She’s still laughing when the line goes dead. Best sound in the world. He tosses the comm onto the coffee table and clears the back of the couch with at least a foot of air to spare.

Bops back down the hall singing the overplayed pop-rock thing Amy banned from their black and white under his breath because it’s better not to sneak up on Tim when he’s in his own surroundings, much less an alien habitat.

He half-closed the bedroom door on the way out. Now he bumps it back open with his hip… “Hey, boy sleepyhead—”

The bed is empty. The window is open, blinds swinging gently, tip-tapping the frame.

Robin’s cape is gone. He checks, and so are the spare clothes Tim keeps in his bottom drawer.

He’s not surprised. The whole time he was talking to Barbara, he kept picturing Tim climbing out his bedroom window. He more than half expected Tim to be gone by the time he got back in here. But he _is_ disappointed. At least he is until he notices Robin’s mask and belt lying in the middle of the bed.

Dick bounces up onto his toes – half pirouette, half stretch – and he feels himself start to grin. He launches himself, handsprings onto the bed and lands with a thud and a bounce, messy sheets soft under his hands and his chin. There’s a piece of paper tucked under the belt.

 _I want the belt back._

Carefully, Dick folds the paper up and lays it back down beside the belt. He picks the mask up and rolls onto his back; lays the mask over his eyes and the cobwebs on his ceiling look strange when viewed through Robin’s whiteouts.

He might be able to catch Tim if he got up right now and got on his bike. It’s possible. Tim’s driving Redbird, but Dick’s bike can top two-hundred and Dick can do things on a bike that Tim can’t manage on his best day. It would be worth it if only for the look on Tim’s face.

Or he could do the (normal) smart thing and comm him, but he already knows he isn’t going to. He’s going to lie here with Robin’s mask sliding down his nose and grin at his weird-looking cobwebs and Robin’s belt. Because he doesn’t need to see or hear Tim to get him, and he _really_ doesn’t need one line on a sheet of paper to read between Tim’s lines.

He knows an invitation when one punches him in the face.


End file.
